


chalcanthite

by vhscassette



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Platonic Kissing, Platonic Life Partners, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Suicidal Ideation, sad mindscrew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 20:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20159701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhscassette/pseuds/vhscassette
Summary: "soluble in water; turning it blue"a scripted sentence during dave's pneumonia-fueled confusion leads hal somewhere between guilt and mourning.





	chalcanthite

David was covered with as many blankets as Hal had in their meager pile of supplies. Pneumonia had sent him into a sickeningly soft pattern of sleeping, vomiting, gazing quietly at the ceiling, and murmuring something about his father that Otacon wasn't quite able to understand.

"Do you think love can bloom, even on the ocean floor?" he had said mind-blindly, his eyes fluttering shut as a certain wave of confusion or illness took over his already-weakened body. Otacon's fingers stopped typing over the keys, breath stopped in his lungs.

It was all his fault, even from the start.

Hal breathed in.

"I do."

Hal exhaled, inhaled again. Dave's eyes kept fluttering open and closed, waiting for a reply.

He continued. "I think that at any time, any place, people can love someone. You just have to protect them."

The script that Hal felt tumbling from his lips made his chest feel like it was caving inwards. He adjusted his glasses, ignored how his numb fingers didn't even recognize the action.

"In the end, though, I failed in protecting you, Snake."

The vision of his stepmother, his father, _ David, _sinking into the bottom of the Hudson made him feel like it would be better off if he found his now-unused M9 and do what his mind told him to.

But suddenly, David's words made Otacon stop his limbs from filling with television static.

"You didn't fail. You saved me," Dave spoke winded, his voice hoarse as dry sandpaper.

Otacon's glasses reflected blankly on his computer screen, a conversation with Mei Ling temporarily on hold. "I sent you to die, David."

"You sent yourself on a boat in the middle of a--" a loud, gurgling hack of a cough that surely spit phlegm and infected fluid onto their shitty carpet-- "middle of a flash-flood _ rainstorm _ to pick up my floating body. You broke our _ protocol, _Hal."

"I sent you to fucking _ die, _ Dave. _ That _ was already breaking any fucking _ protocol _ that could have existed, and you know it," Hal said sharp, a very seeping and bitter tone in his voice that for some reason _ startled _Snake.

"Stop giving me that shit, Otacon," Snake attempted to growl in his suddenly increasing moment of lucidity, his voice coming out as pebbles. "You thought you had intel, and we went for the intel."

Hal slammed his hands on the table, throwing his already cracked glasses onto the table and angrily glaring at Snake, all point and more rage than he's ever seen on the spindly man. _ "You _ went in for the _ fucking _ intel, Snake! ** _You _ ** did it while I fucking sat on my ass and listened to you _ slam _ against the fucking wall, gurgling into your damn codec! Stop fucking _ telling _ me-" the tears were beginning to reflect off of the soft blue of his computer screen-- "that I was worth _ anything--" _ his face was melting from his own rage-- "in _ any _ of this whole _ fucking _mess, David--"

Snake, body shaking from the effort but suddenly filled with an angry fever, rose up to his elbows and attempted to move his legs off of the couch. His chest croaked with breath, but his face was crowded with anger. "Watch your fucking mouth, ** _Hal. _**Stop fucking _ doing _this shit--"

"You fucking _ drowned _ because of me, David!" Hal screamed, half breaking into sobs as his body buckled thankfully in his seat, "Don't you fucking understand how my life _ works, Dave?!" _

"What in fuck's name are you even going _ on _about, Hal?!" David growled harshly back in severe yet clouded frustration, the breaking point of his tolerance of Hal's self blame reaching a boil.

Hal inhaled a sob, sniffling harshly as snot threatened to run down his mouth. "My _ dad, _ Snake. My _ dad. _ He-- He grabbed my little sister and-- he tried to kill her _ and _ himself by _ drowning _them in our pool!"

Hal's fingers, pale and blurring in his myopic vision, twitched and shook as he clutched his head harshly in his hands.

He remembered his father looking just like him in that pool, his dead face staring up, the only difference being the soft silver hair that Hal was born with by _ someone. _

"My dad and I share the same face, Snake. I saw myself dead that day, and now I have two dead faces to see in the water," Hal weakly blubbed into his hands, tears and mucus running down his hot, flushed face. If his head was an open hole, he could only hope someday Snake could pack it in with dirt. He'd trust him, love him with that, _ only _him. He wanted to die from Snake's hand, Snake's warm gun, and a part of him nearly wanted to beg for him to destroy his meager, pathetic body.

Snake was silent for a long time before sighing, rubbing his eyes with a palm. His face looked equally worse for wear as he glanced to the side.

"Hal, the fact of the matter is that I didn't die _ directly _because you had saved me."

Otacon's head swam in the truth of it, and hated himself regardless.

".. But I-"

"It literally doesn't matter what had caused it. I would have died if you hadn't come for me."

Otacon at this point at stopped crying, not out of calm but because he was still seeing his father's face at the bottom of their pool, dead and drowned. Snake had stood up and nearly tripped in all of his lack of grace, but still made it over to him and kneeled to match his height on the chair.

He pulled Otacon's hands away from his face and found empty gray eyes staring back. His eyes, however, glazed into focus for just one mere moment.

In one moment that Hal didn't understand, Hal had softly grabbed his stubbled, rough cheeks and kissed his lips.

His heart didn't race, his mind didn't clear. All he could think was _ I'm sorry. _

When he pulled away, he found Snake's blank eyes staring back at him with indifference.

Hal's mind never _ did _catch up with him on the action. Snake, though, managed to pull a bandaged hand around his small, bony shoulders and press a light, chaste kiss to his lips in return.

Tears ran down Hal's face in the resulting silence.

"I'm sorry," Hal's lips mouthed against Snake's.

"It's okay," Snake said, pulling away as Hal's crying increased.

"Don't forgive me," Otacon choked, his head running slow as dial up as Snake picked him up in a half-breaking princess carry.

"It's all alright, Hal," Snake said, his voice warm as a blanket as he carried Hal with shaking legs to their one bedroom. Hal was crying, breaking with every step.

"Please don't leave me here, Snake. I'm sorry," he begged, reaching for him like a child as Snake moved to lay with him.

"Wasn't planning on it. It's alright. It's all okay," Snake muttered, clutching the blankets with one fumbling hand as Hal clung to him, his mind far off to some sunny house back in '97. As his mind fell apart to sleep, still stringed back to a family pool, bubbles of air from the deep end, failing wheelchair, Snake rubbed his back and tried his damnedest to avoid coughing.

Hal's quartz-crystals of dreams consisted of being horizontally underwater, with Snake floating just barely above him on the other side.

**Author's Note:**

> i never write happy shit for this ship do i lol


End file.
